The invention relates to a mold and neck ring cooling system for a glass molding machine, such as an I.S. machine.
For shaping and obtaining the desired mechanical properties of a parison and the molded hollow glass article formed therefrom, it is important to have desired uniform and in particular reproducible temperature conditions during the molding process in the blank molds and blow molds of a glass molding machine. This concerns the actual mold cooling provided by coolant holes in the mold walls, and the neck ring cooling, which relates to the finish area of the article to be molded, namely a hollow glass article. Added to this is the configuration of the elements necessary to guide the coolant, e.g., cooling air, which is simple and economical to maintain and repair and which should be equally configured for use in the abrasive operating environment of a glassworks.
Since the molds are usually composed of mold halves that are movably arranged between an open and a closed position during the molding process, the coolant guidance concept must provide a movable section which forms the link between, on the one hand, a fixed coolant supply arranged, for example, in a station box, and on the other hand, movable parts corresponding to the opening and closing movement. Also of further importance is the question of the complexity of a conversion to a different mold height in terms of workmanship.
It has been found that the requirements listed above cannot be fully met with the prior known embodiments of a cooling arrangement.
In known embodiments, the mold and a neck ring cooling are supplied with cooling air from a common opening of the station box. A use of separately switchable, sufficiently dimensioned valves is thus often not possible, in particular for the mold cooling.
A generic mold and neck ring cooling arrangement is known from EP 1 149 806 A2, in which a neck ring cooling and a mold cooling are provided independent of each other. In this case, however, a telescoping cooling tube is provided as part of the mold cooling, but the elements provided to adjust for changes in length are unprotected against the operational conditions of the glass molding environment.